


Darkness Falls

by HappyLeech



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Gen, Mild Gore, Murder, Tags Relationships and Ratings to Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 15:17:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10249892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HappyLeech/pseuds/HappyLeech
Summary: Before the Shambali, he was a killer, assassinations and death his calling. Unfortunately, escaping the hold of the God A.I. wasn't enough to temper the urges within.





	

If someone was to ask Tekhartha Zenyatta _“why?”_ , he would answer them truthfully. He was not, in fact, corrupted by some God A.I., nor was the Iris commanding him to do such things. It was simply who he was.

“A quirk of personality, I suppose,” he would say, then chuckle in the most non-threatening way, holding one of his orbs in hand, running metal fingers over the grooves and listening to the quiet chimes it emitted.

Zenyatta had been one of the few who retained their fighting skills after breaking free of the God A.I, taking his place as a member of the Shambali’s defences to repel any attacks led by the local human population. While the humans were met with crushing defeat, there were no deaths, and the defenders would return to the monastery to weep and pray to the Iris for forgiveness for taking up arms.

But for Zenyatta, it was not the same.

He wanted to see clearly how a human’s neck would snap with the right amount of pressure, how their corpses would fall to the snowy ground, frozen warnings to keep further intruders away.

Alas, the Iris wanted no deaths by omnic hands, and thus Zenyatta kept his desires to himself until he could no longer.

* * *

His first kill was a woman living on the outskirts of the village leading to the monastery, her washing drying in the cool air as she looked out over the peaks. It was misty, Zenyatta leaving before the morning had truly broken and his Brothers and Sisters could stop him.

“Tekhartha!” she’d smiled at him, nodding her head in greeting as she turned away from the view. He returned the greeting before snapping her neck like it was nothing, striking her down before she could scream. The body he left on the ground by her washing, before taking her spot to stare out at the landscape.

He would, he’d decided, miss Nepal, but he couldn’t stay there and listen to Mondatta Dai talk of acceptance for the humans, of a world where Omnics were accepted if only because the Iris was accepted. The people of the village least of all, he thought as he nudged the body on the ground with disdain.

“How can he think you deserve equality within the Iris, after all you’ve done to hurt us?” he asked the body, before shaking his head. He had spent enough time staring out into the snow and mist—he didn’t need some human to find him speaking to a corpse and rouse a mob in response.

Picking his way through the village, Zenyatta didn’t avoid the humans living there, nor did he seek them out as he made his way down the mountain. Some nodded to him, few scowled and turned away, and the children ran up to him, chattering happily. They were, he decided with an approving hum, the only ones he wouldn’t seek out to kill, other than his Brothers and Sisters up above.

* * *

Travelling the world, Zenyatta discovered, was expensive and unfriendly. He had expected monetary issues—the Shambali took donations, but what money they were gifted was more often than not spent on their own care and upkeep rather than hoarding the funds for frivolous things.

Cleaning the blood off of his fist with the shirt of a man who was about to be a corpse, Zenyatta had to chuckle at the thought of leaving Nepal being considered ‘frivolous’. The back alley he was currently occupying in China was not anything that could be called extravagant, not with the mud and garbage covering the pavement.

A stream of blood met a muddy puddle of water near the man’s leg, and he tried to wheeze out a cry for help before Zenyatta placed one hand over his mouth, silencing him.

“Ah, I doubt the Iris would consider this a frivolous matter, but the Iris is not keen on these acts of mine either,” he sighed, before reaching down and slamming his fist into the man’s throat before he could even think to make another sound.

If he could smile, he would have, watching the man gasp as his airways constricted, silently pleading for air as Zenyatta knelt beside him to riffle through his jacket and pants pockets. “Thank you for your generous donation.”

The man’s eyes widened briefly as Zenyatta pulled out his wallet, ditching the id and other identifiers and taking the cash and credit chips, sliding them into the pocket on the inside of his waistband. Another second was spent to wipe his fist off yet again before Zenyatta stood.

“Gaze into the Iris, and know peace,” he said, before folding his legs and floating away from the scene. He didn’t need to sully his feet on bloody pavement, after all. While the Iris no longer spoke to him, or perhaps it did and he simply ignored its words, he still carried within him the power to heal, medical nanobots that could spill out at a moments notice to ease suffering and cure ailments.

Instead, he used them to check that the man behind him was dying, and had no chance of real recovery if he was found. One of the Orbs of Destruction—a name that he found to be both apt and amusing considering he was, well, who he was—bounced above his hand, chiming quietly and relaying with satisfying accuracy that the vital signs of the man behind him had fallen silent.

It was not the first time that he’d been followed into a back alley, or, rather, it was not the first time that he’d lured someone into a back alley over the few weeks he’d been traveling. Omnics were still distrusted, and Zenyatta had already had several run-ins with poachers out to strip unwary omnics of their components and wiring. He supposed that was his good deed, in this entire endeavour of his.

The man had enough cash on him for Zenyatta to buy uninterrupted access to an omnic charging port for 5 hours, time Zenyatta spent meditating and planning his next move. He was getting tired of China, nearly every stop he made was unfriendly and generally uninteresting, and if he wasn’t careful someone was going to put two and two together and take note of the monk wandering through each town.

So Zenyatta, in the morning, made his way to the largest city, took what he could from the credit chips, and dumped them before considering his options. He could go to Japan, Russia, Korea…

Instead, he settled on the Philippines and set out once again.

* * *

For almost a year, Zenyatta wandered, killing when it was needed—occasionally when it wasn’t as well—and stealing in the name of the Shambali. But it was starting to get dull, he found, wandering like he was with no set goal. At first he had no plan but to wander, then it became a mission to kill those out to dismantle his fellow Omnics, the poachers and thugs who followed him into alleyways and cornered him on the road. But he wasn’t sure of that anymore either—he’d added a few Omnics to his list of kills, ones with no respect and who worked to dismantle their own brethren.

So he wandered, and it wasn't until he was in the middle of something, a woman voicelessly screaming to no one for help as he toyed with one of his orbs—Discord, it was called— that the Iris called for him. For the first time since he started his wanderings, it spoke to him, and Zenyatta froze as he listened. He became still enough that the woman wriggled out from under him, but it did not freeze him enough to stop him from sending the orb out after her. The impact caused her to hit the ground hard, the cracking noise echoing through the evening as blood streaming from the sizeable dent in her skull and pooling on the pavement.

“Is it truly time for me to return home?” He asked as he approached the body, bending as he pried the orb out of the cavity it had created, his tone one of disgust as strips of scalp peeled away as well. “Or is this a trap? Alas, the Iris is the one to ask me to return this time…I know I can’t refuse.”

Again, one of his orbs—the one of Harmony—chimed to let him know the woman was dead as he rummaged through her pockets, pulling out a frankly pitiful amount of cash. Tucking it into his waistband, he started to walk to where he'd rented accommodations, one of the more dangerous areas but the only one that would rent to an Omnic. He would have to wash his weapon, for there was only so much he could do to clean it by hand with bits of hair and scalp stuck in the grooves before he returned to Nepal.

* * *

Returning home was…interesting.

The people of the village were friendly still—some of the children he’d seen on his exit had grown and followed him as he made his way to the monastery near the top of the mountain, talking to him of the things that had happened, not that they said anything he took interest in.

The home where the woman had been hanging her laundry was empty, and he didn’t need to ask to know that she had been cremated.

Mondatta was awaiting him at the entrance of the main hall, and while he didn’t have his arms crossed, Zenyatta knew he wanted to. For an omnic with an expressionless faceplate, he wore his displeasure well.

But, he did not act on it, and instead merely bowed his head in greeting, his hands clasped behind his back. “Welcome back, Zenyatta Bhai. Did you travel well?”

Zenyatta echoed the greeting and the stance. “I did, Mondatta Dai. The Iris summoned me back, did it not?”

Mondatta motioned for him to follow with a sigh. “That it did. We have a visitor, but I fear he is not connecting to the Iris as well as our Brothers and Sisters. Perhaps the Iris feels you would be more suited to mentor him and called you back for that reason.”

“Mhm.” It had been some time since an Omnic had traveled to seek out the Shambali—even those that Mondatta reached out to from his chambers, one of the few areas in the monastery where he spoke to the outside world, didn’t make the trek. “Are they one of the Bastion units, from the war?” he asked, ignoring the looks from his fellows and resisting the urge to float while Mondatta walked.

“No, he is not an omnic, but rather a cyborg.” Mondatta stopped near one of the meditation rooms and motioned to the door. “If you wouldn’t mind, Bhai Zenyatta?”

Ignoring how overly formal Mondatta was—he must have known it was him who’d killed the woman in the village, and Zenyatta wouldn’t be surprised if Mondatta had learned of the other murders from the Iris—Zenyatta entered the room. If his fellows wanted to confront him about that, they would have to wait until he was finished with whatever it was he had been summoned for.

Inside sat the cyborg, sitting haphazardly on the floor and playing with a throwing star that he quickly stored back in his wrist when Zenyatta entered. Green lights were inlaid in his body, metal and synthetic muscle covering nearly all of him, two swords sat by his back, a ribbon coiling down from his head draping across them. Zenyatta idly wondered how much of him was indeed human.

“Tekhartha,” the cyborg said, moving to stand, but Zenyatta motioned for him to stop.

“You can stay seated,” he said, folding his legs and settling into his normal posture, floating above the ground but not high enough to be threatening or loom of the cyborg. “And please, call me Zenyatta. You are?”

The cyborg cocked his head to the side, then nodded to himself as though he’d made a decision, of what Zenyatta didn’t know but felt he would soon find out.

“I am Shimada Genji.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, I have this bad habit of looking at my favourite characters and going "You know what? Making them a serial killer would be fun." and Zenyatta is the first of a few that this going to happen to in the Overwatch universe, oops.
> 
> This fic is fueled by the feelings gained when I murder a Bastion, Genji, or Pharah without assistance, proving that Tankyatta is real and I play him
> 
> * * *
> 
> Bhai is Younger Brother in Nepali  
> Dai is Older Brother in Nepali
> 
> (I used several websites to check, but please let me know if I've messed those 2 words up!)
> 
> * * *
> 
> [Personal Tumblr](http://happyleech.tumblr.com/) / [Overwatch Tumblr](http://over-swatch.tumblr.com/) / [TextsFromLastNight Overwatch Tumblr](http://textsfromwatchpointgibraltar.tumblr.com/)


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